The election of Donald Trump as the next American president will lead to what John Foster Dulles once called an "agonizing reappraisal" on both sides of the Atlantic. The future of NATO and of the American role in European security is clearly now very open. Trump's views on Russia and Putin are part of a larger worldview of a man whose foreign experience has been entirely based on business deals. Trump the deal-maker believes the United States has been supporting a group of free riders in Europe who have taken advantage of American largess. He has a view similar to Putin's that the world is made of winners and losers and that only the strong prevail. His and Putin's admiration for strong leaders also applies to strong countries. Trump also wants to refocus on rebuilding America and restoring the industrial base. America First and Americanism over Globalism are the words he has used to describe these priorities.

Much of this builds on themes of both the Bush and Obama administrations, which have also stressed that the Europeans carry more of the leadership and defense burden, have shifted American strategic priorities toward Asia and specifically China, and have reacted to growing pressures at home to rebuild the domestic economic base. However, the Trump view goes much further in his linking of American security guarantees under Article 5 of the NATO treaty directly to the amount allies contribute to defense. The Trump view of the new Russian challenge is also different in that the new president is more open to cutting a deal with Putin along a spheres-of-influence approach. He will see no American interest in pushing NATO enlargement beyond where it stands and could even contemplate NATO retrenchment back to a core area of western Europe and Poland. The Baltic states will now be in a new gray zone. Trump and his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, are also likely to partner with Russia on combating the Islamic State group, especially in Syria.

Outlook 2017: Perspectives from global thought leaders

This reorientation of American strategy in Europe will face a number of key questions. Where will the American security guarantee extend? Will it include all current NATO member states or will the Baltics be left in a gray zone? How will a deal on spheres of influence actually work in Ukraine, which will not accept Russian domination and will resist with force if necessary? What will such an understanding do to the Western sanctions regime and to Western unity? What will be the status of the recently agreed upon NATO Joint Task Force and American deployments in the Baltics and Poland and the decision by the Obama administration to spend up to $4 billion for additional American deployments to the region?

The dangers for miscalculation and military confrontation in Europe have never been higher. Russian military modernization has been substantial over the past four years and it now has the capability to deny access to NATO forces in its immediate neighborhood, including the Baltics and the Baltic and Black seas. It does not have the capability of posing a serious, conventional threat to western Europe and probably not to Poland as well but has compensated for this with a new and extremely dangerous emphasis on nuclear weapons and nuclear intimidation. Russia now regards nuclear weapons as more than a deterrent but as an instrument of "de-escalation." All this comes at a time when Russian military harassment in the Baltic area has reached dangerous levels. The Russian government has pulled out of its commitments made under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty governing nuclear forces in Europe, has escalated its nuclear presence in Kaliningrad and has peaked hysteria over nuclear war with its public.

The potential for miscalculation and for conflict are enhanced by the insecurity of the Putin regime, which is leading a country with a declining economy and population and which lacks stable governing institutions. Military-to-military communication is at an all-time low and all efforts at diplomatic agreements have failed as western leaders have come to the belief that agreements with Putin mean nothing. Now add in the uncertainty of a very different kind of American administration and the result is both dangerous and uncertain. The large American security bureaucracy will have some influence in shaping the Trump administration's policies and it will be important to see how much the Trump team will consist of experienced national security professionals. NATO is a brand name in the US and has a great deal of support in the Washington bureaucracy so it may be that there will be more continuity than is currently promised. However, like US President Barack Obama and former President George W Bush, Trump has little regard for the Washington foreign policy community, which he believes got the USinto the Iraq and Afghan conflicts with disastrous consequences. Add to this a Europe in complete disarray following Brexit and facing the the prospect of Trumpism in a number of NATO states. Whatever the outcome for US strategy, it is clear that it is now in more flux than at any time since Dulles spoke of agonizing reappraisals in the 1950s.

Stephen Szabo is executive director of the Transatlantic Academy, a Washington-based think tank.

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